"Am I seeing things? Skyhawks?" Topic

Living in close proximity to a US Marine Corps base you get accustomed to your house shaking due to artillery fire or the low fly over of v-22 Ospreys, or drinking your morning coffee on the back porch to the distant slow chatter of .50 calibers. However last evening and today at lunch, I started seeing fast-movers that silhouette of the A-4 Skyhawk. I am hesitant to say they are Skyhawks, a wonderful little jet I am very familiar with from my days in the Corps, as they were retired from service years ago. They are doing classic pop-up runs and swooping runs on their approach. They are not Harriers as I know that silhouette from all of their fly-overs. It's driving my nuts as I know of nothing else that has the same silhouette. If anyone out there has any thoughts as to what else they could be, I'd love to know.

I think Brazil got most of them. Maybe they are testing them for CAS? They could haul a lot if I recall.

Could they be privatley operated by draken international?

link

Good catch. Maybe they are "Red Team".

Perhaps they're bringing them out of mothballs, since they've got fewer hours on them than the more modern jets, and have a working oxygen system.

What ever they are they are doing CAS drills. It brings back memories when they do their inverted climb and then roll as they dive at the target, shortly after dropping out of sight behind the tree line you hear the whomp of ordinance as the house vibrates. I used to love calling in practice strikes at 29 Palms and seeing those birds scoot through the valleys.

Here's a shot with a 200mm lense:

And here is the same picture blown up:

And another blown up shot at a different angle:

I unfortunately couldn't get a better shot.

Shyhawk.

I added in some nose probes like that, on my 1/600th scale, Argentinian ones.

Now, we just need to figure out who they belong to.

Looks like perhaps I could be right, and due to cost-cutting, and lower costs to operate these, they've pulled some ancient birds out of mothballs.

Not sure who else would be flying them still, especially in your neck of the woods.

Used to see the USMC conduct amphibious landing exercises near San Diego, this time of year. Usually, with SeaCobra helos flying very low over their alligators, and hovercraft.

I knew I wasn't crazy. It's now dark here and they are still flying. Every few minutes I hear one fly over followed shortly by a house shaking whomp.

Lucky you!

Love that stuff.

Of course, perhaps not in the middle of the night, though.

Didn't they use the A-4 in Aggressor squadrons?

Yes, though not sure they still do.

Perhaps they do.

I thought they'd switched over to F-5s (Mig-28s), and various other aircraft, in striped, Russian camo.

The Mig-28s that fly over my house are black, like in the Topgun movie.

Yes, they still fly them as aggressors- but via private operators who fly them as the A4-K/N. King Monkey had it right.

But these guys are doing bombing runs against ground targets which is pretty aggressive for aggressor training. ;-)

Wish they'd pull some F-14s out of mothballs…….

Very interesting: link

Not necessarily aggressor training. They're training my Marines: link

I never thought that the DoD would contract out ground attack training missions.

I remember seeing them at Point Mugu NAS back in 2010. I thought it kinda odd to see them there.

Could be Argentine AF up for cross-training with the US.

But I'd expect that it's Draken International

I'd be interested to know what sorts of munitions
Draken stores and the controls placed upon them with
special emphasis on TGM and FAE, especially since
Draken has its own facilities in Florida (Lakeland),
California (Mojave Air and Space Port) and Nevada
(Nellis AFB, which is listed as a Draken facility).

Draken also lists a base in Nimes, France as one
of theirs.

My guess is that the munitions are provided by the hiring service. Probably have to be loaded by Draken techs, since each plane has different loading procedures.

Does Argentina still have operational Skyhawks?